Upheaval across the Middle East

The continuing protests in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere show that the Arab uprisings are far from over. The place of this conflict-torn region in the world is at stake, as well as its democratisation

par Alain Gresh,
décembre 2011

“The lion doesn’t like it if a stranger enters his house. The lion doesn’t want his children to be taken away in the night ; the lion won’t let it happen. They should not interfere in the lion’s house.” The strangers Hamid Karzai spoke of are International Security Assistance Force soldiers who violate the sanctity of homes in their search for suspects. The Afghan president was applauded loudly, although he is hardly the king of the beasts. The US installed him in 2001, and keeps him in power ; his August 2009 election was rigged with the connivance of the “international community” [1]. This nationalist speech was a preparation for post-2014, when most of the US troops and their auxiliaries will leave Afghanistan. But such oratory is unlikely to save him from the usual fate of collaborators.

The US is engaged in one of the most complex operations for the repatriation of equipment (and troops) in its history. By the end of this year, only a few hundred advisors will remain in Iraq, its other invasion zone. To the last minute, the US tried to persuade the Iraqi government to allow troops to stay on, but the popular protests within Iraq were so great that even Nato’s political allies rejected the demand.

The US will leave a country freed of a dictator, but no model for a democratic Middle East. Iraq is ravaged and divided, the state dysfunctional : there are many widows and orphans, seriously wounded and missing persons, stronger religious sectarianism, and an active al-Qaida presence, though there was none at the time of the 2003 invasion. The International Criminal Court will not try any Americans for these crimes.

And though the Iraqi government has ties to the US, it has better relations with its powerful neighbour Iran. In Iraq, as in Afghanistan, people have shown they will not be governed by foreigners — there can be no going back to the colonial period. These failures prove Washington’s relative loss of influence in the region, confirmed by the Arab uprisings, the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, the US’s protégé in Egypt and a pillar of its regional strategy.

This has prompted local players to take a more active role. The Middle East had been divided into two camps : the resistance camp — Iran, Syria and their allies Hamas and Hizbullah — and the pro-West camp dominated by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The advantage has gone to the resistance. In the first months of the uprisings, popular protests have toppled pro-western regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and shaken Bahrain and Yemen. Jordan and Morocco are eager for change ; in Lebanon, a government formed by Hizbullah and its Christian allies of Michel Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement has taken power.

Saudi Arabia moved to action

Concern about the US’s weakness in abandoning old friends, and panic at the idea that the uprisings might spread, roused Saudi Arabia from relative passivity. It showered $214bn — the equivalent of Portugal’s public debt — on its citizens over a few weeks to defuse dissatisfaction, not just among the Shia minority but also among young people voicing their anger on blogs and social networks [2]. It created 60,000 new jobs at the interior ministry, in the hope of silencing recalcitrant Saudis.

Ignoring geography, it also proposed that Jordan and Morocco be invited to join the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) [3], and provided financial aid to their monarchies, and to the new Egyptian regime. Riyadh also led the GCC force that invaded Bahrain in March to crush its democratic uprising and demands for a constitutional monarchy, raising tensions between Shia and Sunni Muslims throughout the region. The invasion, which ignored US concerns, used the pretext of the “Iranian threat”, which worries Gulf leaders far more than Israel does.

Iran and Saudi Arabia were rivals even before the Iranian revolution of 1979, when both were US allies. Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for the overthrow of the house of Saud and Saudi Arabia’s support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88 caused relations to deteriorate. Though they improved during the 1990s, the rivalry revived with the US invasion of Iraq, the installation of an Iraqi government perceived as Shia (and therefore close to Tehran), Iran’s growing regional influence and the popular protests in Bahrain ; the Syrian situation has now brought all this to the fore.

The US and Europe have applauded the Arab League’s decision to suspend Syria : long criticised for its passivity, the League had finally taken action and was defending human rights and not just with vague proclamations. Relieved outside observers ignored the fact that those who voted for Syria’s suspension included the Saudi monarchy (whose new crown prince Nayef, minister of the interior since 1975, encourages the activities of the religious police), Bahrain’s ruling dynasty (which has now acknowledged the arrests and torture of opponents) and Sudan’s president (accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Court). Outside observers were just happy the League had rallied to the Arab Spring.

The Lebanese intellectual Assad Abu Khalil writes : “The Arab League’s motives are not related to the Arab uprisings. They are part of US regional orders. They are also part of the rising ambition of the emirate of Qatar : it now wants to prove to the US that it can be as subservient and loyal to US imperial interests as Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Qatar is proving its usefulness to the US (and Israel). The Arab League has proven that it can only be allowed to be relevant to the extent to which it can strictly follow US dictates” [4]. Is Abu Khalil right to conclude : “That is why it is preferable that the Arab League remains irrelevant” ?

Precondition for the Palestinian cause

What is happening in the Middle East now will determine the future of democracy in the region, and also its independence. The Egyptian commentator Mohammed Hassanein Heykal, adviser to Nasser, once spoke of a “new” Sykes-Picot agreement [5] on the division of the region between the western powers [6] and of Israel’s quest to crush the Palestinians — which has failed to draw any serious response from the Arab League. This hidden dimension would explain, without justifying, Hizbullah’s support for the Syrian regime, whose survival Hizbullah’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, has described as a “precondition to the continuation of the Palestinian cause” [7].

The Syrian government has decided force is the only response to a “foreign conspiracy”. It has thrown in its army and militias, using all means — torture, assassination, mass arrests. It has some support from the Alawites, and from other religious minorities (Christians, Druze), and even from some in the Sunni community, as shown by the demonstrations in support of President Bashar al-Assad which are not covered by western TV channels or Al Jazeera. The risk of a sectarian civil war is real, even if the regime is overstating the risk to legitimise itself.

This worries Syria’s neighbours, especially Turkey, which shares a 900km border with Syria, and at first urged Assad to implement reforms. His obstinate refusal turned Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan against the Syrian regime. As a member of Nato, Turkey is performing a diplomatic balancing act between condemnation of Israeli policy, maintenance of its growing popularity in the Middle East (which has eclipsed that of Iran) and its fears that Syria will play the Kurdish card, as it did in the 1990s, and support the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkey has allowed units of the Free Syrian Army (made up of military defectors) to camp on its territory and, if the conflict spreads, may consider establishing zones for the protection of the civilian population on Syrian territory. Turkey fears a sectarian conflict that could spread through the Middle East, a far more serious risk than the Iranian “nuclear threat”.

The question of Iran

Despite media hype, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) November report does not confirm that Iran is building nuclear weapons — an accusation first made in 1984 [8] and often repeated — but raises doubts, because of the refusal of western and Israeli security agencies to supply the IAEA with the documents on which “intelligence” was based. Tehran has not responded to the report.

As Hamid Serri of Florida International University said, this is like the case against Iraq in the early 2000s [9] : “On 17 March 2003 [three days before the war] Unmovic [United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, led by Hans Blix] published a report with a 12 page annexe detailing the actions that Iraq had to take to come clean on weapons of mass destruction [WMD].” Why were they convinced Iraq was hiding WMD ? “The problem was not the information, it was the premises of the inspectors…[who] were wedded to a theory of Iraq WMD that could never be disproved … Premises such as : we cannot trust Iraq.” The inspectors ignored the absence of evidence and the Iraqis failed to prove they were not hiding anything. So the IAEA has for years accused Iran of “bad faith” in a process whose purpose is not to verify Iran’s nuclear programme, but to keep accusing the regime. The IAEA continues to claim Iran’s goal is the atomic destruction of Israel, although Israel’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, says he can see many reasons why Tehran should want the bomb in such an unstable region [10].

Does this mean war is on the way ? It seems unlikely, for analysts agree that the consequences of an attack on Israel would be disastrous for the region. But the US and Israel have won the first round : they have created an enemy to distract the world from the Palestine question and allowed the formation of a de facto alliance between moderate Arab states and Israel. This may remind us of the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan dreamed of uniting Arabs and Israelis against the “Soviet threat”.

The Arab uprisings mask the true scale of the geopolitical schisms. Divisions in the Middle East and North Africa could be seen even before 2011 — in the civil war in Iraq, the instability in Kurdistan, the silent civil war in Lebanon, the fragmentation of Palestine, the secession of South Sudan and other movements in Sudan, the instability in the Sahara and the fighting in Western Sahara. A regional war would not only be the end of democratisation, it would bring chaos to a region on Europe’s doorstep.

P.-S.

[2] In 2000, 18% of Saudi Arabia’s unemployed had university degrees ; in 2009, it was 44%. See Edith Schlaffer and Ulrich Kropiunigg, “Saudi Youth : Unveiling the Force for Change”, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Gulf Analysis Paper, Washington, 4 November 2011.

[3] The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf is composed of six Gulf countries : Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.